Promoting Safety on the Roads
Page 16
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ANEW safety campaign, organized by the M.O.W.T., no doubt in conjunction with the appropriate bodies, will soon be in full swing. The Minister, at his recent meeting with the Press was not prepared to discuss the matter of roads, but stated that he would probably be holding another conference at an early date, at which this and other aspects of road transport would be dealt with.
We fully appreciate the urgent need for paying attention to the various factors which may influence the growth or diminution of accidents on the road, but we are not highly optimistic as to any great measure of success being achieved in this way alone.
Of all the. methods suggested, the education of the child is probably likely to prove the most effective, but only as a long-term policy. The difficulty of altering the habits of adults is well known, and the old, particularly, take little notice ' of advice or propaganda.
It is the conditions of road transport that must be altered. While all classes of vehicle—fast and slow—and people on foot are mixed together indiscriminately in narrow thoroughfares, the accident figures are bound to remain high.
To our mind, the real and only effective solution of the problem would be a greatly improved road system in which one of the most important factors to which attention is paid is at least partial segregation of highand low-speed traffic, cyclists and pedestrians. Speed limits and other obstructions to transport are merely uneconomic palliatives. Main-road traffic should not be forced continuously to ddcelerate or accelerate; this not only wastes time, but an immense quantity of fuel, and keeps the drivers in a state of mental and physical activity, which is unnerving and tiring.